This document will tell you how to use the RTA Data
Management Spreadsheet, and should be stored along
with it at Z:\RTA Marketing. There are three main tasks
detailed herein – hold down the Ctrl button while
clicking the task name below to be taken to
instructions for completing it.
Create the Monthly RTA Grade Card
Report
Gather emails and send them on the
appropriate date.
Send postal mail on the appropriate
date.
Create the Monthly RTA
Grade Card Report
What is the Monthly RTA Grade Card
Report?
The Monthly RTA Grade Card Report is the
heart of the Sylvan RTA Marketing strategy. As the
name suggests, a new report is created for each month.
It will tell you who to contact, when, and allow you to
decide how. It serves as the guide for emailing and
postal mailing potential RTAs within that month. The
report serves five main purposes:
1. It labels each student record with that month’s
grade card date (if any).
2. It labels each student record with the
responsible party’s email address.
3. It rates each student as “low-” “medium-” or
“high potential” in terms of how likely
they are to become RTAs.
4. It sorts students into groups based on grade
card date and RTA potential.
5.
It organizes data for postal mail label-making.
How do I create a Monthly RTA Grade
Card Report?
You’ll use the RTA Data Management
Spreadsheet template to create the Monthly RTA Grade
Card Report. There are five main tasks that you will
need to perform:
1. Run a Symplicity report for inactive students
from the previous two years.
2. Run a Symplicity Email Extractor report for
inactive students from the previous two
years.
3. Input grade card data for each school into the
RTA Data Management Spreadsheet
template.
.
4. Copy the email report data into the RTA Data
Management Spreadsheet template.
5. Copy the inactive students report data into the
RTA Data Management Spreadsheet
template.
Read on for step-by-step directions for creating the
Monthly RTA Grade Card Report.
Instructions for creating a Monthly RTA
Grade Card Report
You will first run a report of inactive students using
Symplicity. Obviously the steps for doing this will be
familiar to you, but there are a few conditions that must
be met to make sure the report is compatible with the
Data Management Spreadsheet template. NOTE: The
images provided here are what you can expect to see if
using Microsoft Windows XP. Slight cosmetic
differences may be present if using a more recent
version of Windows, but the steps will be the same.
A1. Open Symplicity, click “Reports” and then click
“Student report wizard” from the drop down menu.
A2. You’ll now see the “Student Reports & Query Wizard
box, with six tabs listed near the top: Students, Dates,
Filters, Verify, Order, and Layout. The first tab,
“Students” is visible. Select “Disenrolled Students
(Inactive).” Then click “Next.”
A3. You are now moved to the “Dates” tab. Beneath the
bold text, click the “2b. Date Range” tab. In the
“From:” field, change the date to the first day of the
upcoming month, and then subtract two from the
year.
In the image below, the report is being created on October 18 th
2010. The user has changed the “From:” date to November 1 st
(the first day of the upcoming month) and changed the year to
2008 (2010 minus 2).
A4. Click the “Order” tab. There may be a delay of
several seconds while the computer finds the records
that fit the date range criteria. Once opened, under the
question “5. How do you want to order the students?”
click “Grade, Last Name.” Under “6. How do you
want to output the students?” click “Export to File.”
Then click “Next.”
A5. You are now on the “Layout” tab. Click “Excel 5.0
(.XLS). Then click “Finished”
A6. It will take several seconds for Symplicity to convert
the data to the Excel format. When the “Save as”
window appears, click the “Desktop” icon on the left
side. Do not change the file name. Click “save.”
This will save the file, called “exported students” to
your desktop. Leave it there for now; we’ll use it in a
bit. You can now close Symplicity if you want.
Now you will create another report, this time using the
Symplicity Email Extractor. You will run a report
with content similar to the inactive student report you
just finished. This report lacks several pieces of
information found in the inactive student report, but it
does include an important piece of data missing from
the previous report: an email address for each record.
Note that if an email address is not on record, that
account’s information will not be included in the email
extractor’s report.
A7. On the desktop, double click the “Symplicity Email
Extractor” icon to start it.
A8. There are three tabs along the top: Filters, Results, and
Output. You are currently on the “Filters” tab. In the
“Grades” section, uncheck the “Coll” and blank
boxes.
A9. In the “Status” section, uncheck all boxes
EXCEPT “Inactive.”
A10. In the range area, uncheck “All” in the “Disenroll
Date” row. This will change the two associated text
fields to a white color and allow you to input numbers.
In the left field, change the date to the first day of
the upcoming month, and then subtract two from
the year. This should be the same date you entered in
step 3 above. In the right field, enter today’s date.
A11. Click the “Apply Filters and View Results”
button.
A12. You will be taken to the “Results” tab. You can
preview the report here, but no changes are needed on
this tab. Click the “Output” tab.
A13. In the “Select your output options” section, find
the “Destination/Output folder” text field. To the right
of that field, click the
button. Choose
“Desktop” at the top of the list.
A14. In the “Select your output types” section,
uncheck all options EXCEPT FOR “Excel file.”
A15.
Click the “Create Outputs” button.
A16. Wait several seconds until you receive
confirmation that the email extractor has created
the file. Check to make sure the file is on your
desktop. The filename will begin with
“symplicity_emails_” and end with today’s date.
Close the Email Extractor program.
Now that you have run the two reports and have saved
them as Excel files on your desktop, you are ready to
open the RTA Data Management Spreadsheet template
and to begin to enter your data.
A17. You will first navigate to the RTA Marketing folder.
On the desktop, double-click “My Computer” and
then double-click “Z\:” Double-click the “RTA
Marketing” folder.
A18. You’ll now see five icons. Two of these icons will
be Monthly RTA Grade Card Reports – one for the
current month and one for the previous month. The file
name of both are in the format of ‘year_month_RTA’
(for example, 2010_09_RTA is the report for
September 2010). You won’t need the report for the
previous month now, so move the old file to the “Old
RTA Data Management Spreadsheet Reports”
folder.
A19. Double-click to open the file called “RTA Data
Management Spreadsheet template.” If you look at
the bottom-left corner of the window, you will see the
four tabs that represent the three pages (called
worksheets) that make up the spreadsheet: “dates,”
“emails,” “exported students,” and “mailing labels.”
You are currently on the “dates” worksheet.
A20. On the “dates” worksheet, most of the schools are
grouped by district. You will input the grade card date
(if any) that falls within the month for each school. In
the “Date 1” column, double-click the cell into
which you wish to enter a date, and start typing.
Dates should be input in the form of
month.date.year. For instance, November 12th, 2010
would be entered as 11.12.2010. If no grade card date
falls in the given month, leave the cell blank.
Some schools don’t publish grade card dates, or, like
homeschooled students, have grade cards at all. You
may need to decide on an arbitrary date to enter for
these schools.
Hey! The “Dates” worksheet is missing a
school!
You can add schools to the RTA Data
Management Spreadsheet template’s ‘dates’
worksheet, so they will be available in all
Monthly RTA Grade Card Reports from now on.
If you need to do this, read on. If you just need
to continue to fill out the report, skip down to
step #21.
The RTA Data Management Spreadsheet
template is a read-only file, meaning that it
cannot be edited and then saved under the
same file name; This is to protect the template
from being accidentally changed. To add a
school to the template you will need to turn off
the read-only protection, make your changes,
and then turn the protection back on. It’s not
difficult, but take care that the only change you
make is to add your school(s). The steps for
doing so follow.
A. First, close Excel. Changing the read-only
protection won’t work if the file is open.
B. RIGHT-click on the “RTA Data Management
Spreadsheet template” icon. From the
contextual menu that appears, choose
“Properties.”
C. The properties menu appears. At the bottom,
you’ll see two checkboxes in the “Attributes”
section. Uncheck the one that says “Readonly.”
D. Click “Apply” and then “OK.”
E. Open the “RTA Data Management Spreadsheet
template” file.
F. Add schools as needed. If you need to add a
school name to a group listed by district, RIGHT
click on the cell where you would like for it to
appear, choose “Insert,” then select “entire
row” and then click “OK.”
G. When the school name(s) have been added,
click the
button to save the document.
H. Close Excel.
I. RIGHT-click on the “RTA Data Management
Spreadsheet template” icon. From the
contextual menu that appears, choose
“Properties.”
J. Put a checkmark next to the one that says
“Read-only.”
K. Click “Apply” and then “OK.”
A21. If more than one grade card date occurs within
the same month for the same school, enter that date
in the “Date 2” column.
A22. Enter date information for all schools that release
grade cards in the given month. Click the “emails”
tab.
A23. What you can see of the “emails” worksheet is
blank. Minimize Excel so that you can see your
desktop. Double-click the file that begins with
“symplicity_emails_” that you created with the
Symplicity Email Extractor.
A24. The file opens in Excel. Scroll to the right until
you can see column “X.” The text makes it difficult
to tell, but this is the rightmost column in the
spreadsheet. Scroll down until you can see the
bottom row. Click and hold on the lowest cell in
column “X” that has text in it (most likely this will
frame part of the word “Appointment” – see image
below). Continuing to hold down the mouse button,
drag the cursor to the upper left corner of the sheet.
You will see the selection box follow. Drag the
cursor all the way to cell “A1.” This will have
selected all text in the report.
A25. Once your cursor is over cell “1A,” you can let go of
the mouse button. While still over that cell, click the
RIGHT mouse button to bring up the contextual
menu. Choose “Copy.”
A26. Minimize the Excel window from which you just
copied. Maximize the Excel window that contains
the “RTA Data Management Spreadsheet
template.” After ensuring that you are still on the
blank “emails” worksheet, click cell “A1.” Now click
the RIGHT mouse button to bring up the contextual
menu again. Click “Paste.”
A27. The data from the email report will appear. Check
to make sure that the formatting is correct by
scrolling to the right. Column “Y” should be
colored blue and contain the email addresses
associated with each student’s account.
A28. Once you have confirmed that column “Y” contains
the email addresses, click on the “Exported
Students” tab. The worksheet that opens will also be
blank. Minimize Excel so that you can see your
desktop. Double-click the “exported students” file to
open the report of inactive students that you ran earlier.
A29. The file will open. Scroll to the right until you
see the last column, column “AJ.” Now scroll down
until you can see the bottom row. As with the last
report, click and hold on the lowest cell in column
“AJ”, and then drag the cursor toward the upper
left corner of the sheet until it is over cell “A1”.
A30. Let go of the mouse button. This has selected all
of the text in the spreadsheet. As before, with the
mouse over the selected text, click the RIGHT mouse
button to bring up the contextual menu. Again,
click “Copy.” Minimize the report and then
maximize the RTA Data Management Spreadsheet
template.
A31. You should once again be looking at the empty
“exported students” tab. Place the cursor over cell
“A1” and click the RIGHT mouse button. When
the contextual menu appears, choose “Paste.” This
will insert the data from the “exported students” file
into the worksheet. To check to make sure the data
was input correctly, scroll to the right and find the four
colored columns, “AK” through “AP.” All but perhaps
the “Date 2” column should have some data present.
Hey! What does “School not listed in ‘dates’
tab” mean?
If you see the above message in the “Date 1” and
“Date 2” columns, it means that the school listed
for that student is not among those in the ‘dates’
tab, and therefore doesn’t have a date listed. You
can see what school the student attends in column
“O.” If you think that school should be added to
the RTA Data Management Spreadsheet template
so that it will be among the listed schools for now
on, see the instructions in the blue box under step
A20 of this document. Otherwise you should edit
the cell in the “Date 1” or “Date 2” column
directly to show a date, or to be a blank cell.
A32. You’ll now remove all of the students who are listed
as college students. Scroll left until you see column
“P,” which has the header “grade.” RIGHT click
on that header to bring up the contextual menu.
Hover over “Sort” and then choose “Z to A.”
A33. This will gather all rows with “Coll” in the “school”
column at the top. To delete these rows, click and hold
on the second row’s number and drag down until all
rows with “Coll” are highlighted. Hold your mouse
over any of the highlighted rows, click the RIGHT
mouse button, and choose “Delete.” The highlighted
rows will disappear and all others will be moved up.
A34. You’ll now sort the data in the colored columns. If
you are not already there, click the “Home” menu
button in the upper left corner of the Excel window.
A35. Then, in the upper right corner, click the “Sort &
Filter” icon. Choose “Filter” in the dropdown menu
that appears.
A36. Your view reset to the first column of the worksheet.
Scroll back to the colored columns on the right.
You’ll notice that each column has a gray box with a
downward-pointing arrow in it. Go to the “Date 1”
column and click on that gray box. At the bottom of
the menu that appears is a series of checkboxes listing
each of the dates that appear in the column and an entry
that reads “(Blanks).” Uncheck the “(Blanks)” box
and click “OK.”
A37. All rows with a blank cell in the “Date 1” column
will be hidden from view – all that remains visible are
the students with a grade card date. Now, once again,
click the “Sort & Filter” icon in the upper right
corner of the Excel window. This time choose
“Custom sort.”
A38. The “Sort” window will appear. In the “Column”
drop down selection, choose “Date 1.” In the “Sort
on” field, select “Values,” and in the “Order” field,
choose “A to Z.”
A39. Next, click the “Add Level” button in the upper
left corner. This will create another row of three
dropdown fields. In the first new field, choose “RTA
Potential” from the very bottom of the list. In the
second field choose “Cell Color.” This will cause the
third field to split into two dropdown fields. From the
field that currently reads “No Cell Color,” choose
the most vivid yellow. Leave the field that says “On
Top” alone.
A40. Click “Add Level” one more time. From the first
field, choose “RTA Potential” again. From the
second, choose “Cell Color.” Leave the field that
says “No Cell Color” alone, and change the field that
says “On top” to “On Bottom.” Click “OK.”
All rows are now sorted into groups with the same date, and
then each date-group is arranged with the students with the
highest potential to become RTAs on the top, and the
lowest on the bottom.
A41.
All that’s left is to save the document as the newest
Monthly RTA Grade Card Report. Click the
button or “File” in the upper left corner, and choose
“Save as.” The automatically created filename is
“Copy of RTA Data Management Spreadsheet
template.” Change it to a filename with format
“Year_Month_RTA.” For instance, if the report was
for the month of November 2010, you would name it
“11_2010_RTA.” What you just renamed and saved is
the newest Monthly RTA Grade Card Report, and it is
now available and ready to use for emailing and postal
mailing.
Use the Monthly RTA Grade
Card Report to schedule and
send emails
How do I use the Monthly RTA Grade Card
Report to send emails to potential RTAs?
The Monthly RTA Grade Card Report lists students
with grade card dates within that month, along with
any email associated with their account. To enhance
the possibility that the student will become an RTA, we
want to send an email marketing message on the same
day his or her report card is released. You will open
the Monthly RTA Grade Card Report to the “exported
students” worksheet, copy email addresses that have
the same grade card date, paste them into Microsoft
Outlook, and then schedule them to be sent on the
grade card date.
Instructions for using the Monthly RTA
Grade Card Report to schedule and send
emails
B1. On the desktop, double-click “My Computer” and
then double-click “Z\:” Double-click the “RTA
Marketing” folder.
B2. Open the upcoming month’s Monthly RTA Grade
Card Report. It will have a filename in format of
‘year_month_RTA’ (for example, 2010_11_RTA is the
report for November 2010).
B3. If you are not there already, click the “exported
students” tab at the bottom of the Excel window.
B4. Scroll right to the colored columns, “AK” through
“AP.” You’ll notice that rows are organized so that
the dates in column “AK” (with header “Date 1”) are
grouped together and in ascending order.
Hey! What does “Inquiry number not listed in ‘email’
worksheet” mean?
The Monthly RTA Grade Card Report looks at its ‘emails’
worksheet and matches the inquiry number and email
address in each row. It then looks in the “exported
students” worksheet and puts the email address in the same
row with the inquiry number it saw before. If there is an
inquiry number in “exported students” that isn’t also listed
in the “emails” worksheet, you will see the message
““Inquiry number not listed in ‘email’ worksheet.” Most
likely, this is because there is no email address listed for
the account in Symplicity, and it is therefore not included
in the “emails” worksheet.
B5. Click and hold the mouse button over the first
email address in column AM (with header “email
address”). Drag the cursor downward until all email
addresses with matching dates are selected. Remember
this date for use in step 12.
In this image, rows 2 through 9 in column “AK,” all share the
same grade card date: 11.02.2010. Correspondingly, you would
select the email addresses in rows 2 through 9 in column AM.
B6. RIGHT click anywhere over the selected cells to
bring up the contextual menu. Click “Copy.”
B7. Minimize Excel. Open Outlook and click the
“New…” button to open a blank email. RIGHT click
on the field next to the “To…” button. Click
“Paste” in the menu that appears.
B8. You cannot see them right away, but the email
addresses have been entered into the address field.
Click anywhere outside the address field and they
should appear, separated by semicolons. Don’t worry
if a few addresses are duplicates – Outlook will send
the message only once, regardless of how many times
the email address is repeated in the address field.
B9. Type or paste the contents of the email you want to
send to the addressees. If you don’t know what
should be sent, check with Leslie.
B10. Once you have created a satisfactory email, it is time
to schedule the day on which it will be sent. In the
upper left corner of the Excel window, click
“Options.”
B11. On the right side of the ribbon, click the “Delay
Delivery” icon.
B12. The “Message Options” window appears. The “Do
not deliver before:” checkbox is already checked.
Change the date to match what was listed next to
this group of addresses in the Monthly RTA Grade
Card Report. Change the time to 12:00 AM. Click
“Close.”
That batch of emails will sit in your Outbox until the next
time Outlook is opened after the given date and time.
B13. Go back to step 5 and repeat for the next batch of
emails that share the same grade card date. Continue
until all emails for the month are scheduled.
Use the Monthly RTA Grade
Card Report to schedule
postal mailings and print
labels
address labels.
How do I use the Monthly RTA Grade Card
Report to schedule postal mailings and print
address labels?
The Monthly RTA Grade Card Report collects the
necessary data to create mailing labels and schedule
when they will be sent. You will open the report, go to
the “mailing labels” worksheet, clean up the data and
then use Microsoft Word to print the labels.
Instructions for using the Monthly RTA
Grade Card Report to schedule postal
mailings and print address labels.
C1. On the desktop, double-click “My Computer” and
then double-click “Z\:” Double-click the “RTA
Marketing” folder.
C2. Open the upcoming month’s Monthly RTA Grade
Card Report. It will have a filename in format of
‘year_month_RTA’ (for example, 2010_11_RTA is the
report for November 2010).
C3. Click the “mailing label” tab at the bottom left of
the Excel window.
Each row contains the postal address information for
all “High” and “Medium” RTA potential students. The
rows are also organized into groups of like grade card
dates, but there are blank spaces interspersed
throughout.
C4. If you are not there already, click “Home” in the
upper left corner of the Excel window.
C5. Then click the “Sort & Filter” icon and select
“Filter” from the drop-down menu that appears.
C6. You’ll notice that each column now has a gray box
with a downward-pointing arrow in it. Go to the
“Date 1” column and click on that gray box. At the
bottom of the menu that appears is a series of
checkboxes listing each of the dates that appear in the
column and an entry that reads “(Blanks).” Click
“(Select All)” to UNCHECK all selections. Then
click the box next to “(Blanks)” (This may cause the
“(Select all)” box to become filled in with black –
that’s fine). Click OK.
C7. Now the ‘mailing labels’ worksheet has hidden all
rows that have a grade card date. What you probably
see now is mostly blank rows and a few student records
that have no grade card date. To delete these “junk”
entries, click and hold on the first row number
beneath row 1 (row 1 contains the column header
names). You will see the whole row become selected.
With the button still held down, drag the cursor
downward until you reach or are past row 1000.
Release the button.
C8. Hold the cursor over any of the selected rows and
click the RIGHT button. When the contextual
menu appears, choose “Delete Row.”
C9. All of the rows are deleted and replaced with empty
rows. Click on “Sort & Filter” again, and then
“Clear.”
C10. The rows with dates will appear. Now that there are
no blank rows or rows without dates, you can make
mailing labels. Save your changes to the Monthly
RTA Grade Card Report and then close Excel.
C11. Open Microsoft Word. If you are reading this
document in Word, open a new blank document.
C12. Click the “Mailings” menu option near the top
center of the Word window.
C13. In the upper left part of the Word window, click the
“Start Mail Merge” icon. From the drop-down
menu, click “Labels.”
C14. The Label Options window appears. In the “Label
vendors” drop-down field, choose “Avery US
Letter.” In the “Product number” field, scroll
down and choose “5160.” Click “OK.”
C15. You’ll be taken back to the blank document. Now
click “Select Recipients” and then “Use existing
list...”
C16. The “data source” window will appear. Click “My
Computer,” then double-click “Z:” and then open
the “RTA Marketing” folder. Click the Monthly
RTA Grade Card Report. File. Now click “Open.”
When the “Confirm Data Source” window appears,
click “OK.”
C17. The “Select Table” window appears. Click ‘mailing
labels$’ and then “OK.”
C18. You are taken back to the document. Now you will
see “<<Next Record>>” tiled over the sheet. Click the
“Insert Merge Fields” Icon and choose “RP_First”
C19. You’ll see <<RP_First>> appear in the upper left of
the sheet. Repeat the “Insert Merge Field” until you
have created the address label format in the image
below. Be sure to insert a space between each field.
C20. Next, click the “Update Labels” button.
C21. You’ll see all of the addresses from the Monthly
RTA Grade Card Report appear. You can save that
Word document for use later, or print the labels out
now. Note that the labels are not marked with the
grade card date – you’ll still need to refer back to the
Monthly RTA Grade Card Report to see that data.
However, the labels are still grouped by date.